Cari and Layanor are back together again. We go over the news from Update 13, and have an actual email from a listener. Layanor learns exactly what our cosmetic pet is.

What We Did in Game:

Layanor

• 
  
• 
  

  16.47%

  
  
  

Cari

• 
  
• 
  

  Did some quests to get enough $ to pay for housing maintenance on my other servers.

  
  
  

LOTRO Update 13 Public Livestream

http://www.twitch.tv/lotrostream/b/516732797

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?&postid=7135847#post7135847

On this stream – Sapience, EP Aaron “Rowan†Campbell, MadeOfLions, jwbarry, HoarseDev, Leo from the engineering team in the driver’s seat

Brief tour of Flooded Isengard.

Much of the epic story in U13 will recount how it came to look like this, and what was going on in Isengard at the time that the Battle of the Hornburg was taking place.

MadeOfLions – Wanted to address a concern that was posted on the forums, where a player asked, “What if I haven’t seen Isengard yet – does all that content just go away?†No, that content does not go away. Flooded Isengard is contiguous with Western Rohan, and the previous version of Isengard is adjacent to Dunland. So you can still access both in-game, you can still do all the quests and content for both after U13.

What’s it going to take to access this new content – is it just for people who own Helm’s Deep, is it free for VIP, is it free for everyone – how do you access the content for U13

Rowan – Anyone can travel there. As always, it’s an open world you can travel across. In terms of the content and the quests, this is an extension and in many ways a completion of the Helm’s Deep story, so you will need to own the Helm’s Deep expansion to play through the quests in this area and in the new Fangorn area.

MadeOfLions – Because there are now two different versions of Isengard in the game, he created a waypoint to teleport between the two regions, and he very intentionally did not gate it behind any quests or anything. You should be able to use it, a chicken would be able to use it if she wanted to. So there isn’t any gating on physically getting to the new version of Isengard or getting back and forth.

Rumour is there’s a lot of session play, but you can skip it. How does skipping session play impact the questing or the epic story, does it make it so you can’t do parts of the quests or epic story, or is it completely optional

MadeOfLions – It is completely optional. As you are playing through the quests and epic story you will encounter characters who witnessed very interesting things, and they will offer to tell you about these interesting things if you want. If you don’t want to play the session play experiences you can just proceed onto the next quest giver and you would never know it.

Previewing of session play as Treebeard, otherwise known as “Ent Playâ€

MadeOfLions – This is wholly optional, but there is something to be said for playing as an ent and experiencing one of the scenes from the books.

Discussion about the next Producer’s Letter

What’s the new class and when will it be in

Rowan – If it was April first he could say the new class was Ent Play, but that’s being added with U13. The new class will be described in his next producer’s letter, which will come out with the launch of U13 (April 14). He thinks that letter has only had 8 or 9 revisions now, which has to be a record.

MadeofLions – There are a few instances and a few sessions in Book 14, which is the final book of Volume 3, and they will be starting a new volume. It will be very exciting, it will have a new story and a new direction, and will hopefully be distinct from Volume 3 and exciting in new and different ways he’s not allowed to talk about right now.

They’ve done this in a few different ways. Some of them may feel familiar from Hytbold dailies, where they’ve tried to iterate and take some noticeable steps forward from that design and structure, to give more variety and options in the questpacks.

The second part is that we’ll get a Huorn pet bestower on the way through Isengard, and he will come back to the forest with Quickbeam. He’ll follow us around and bestow quests at different spots in the forest as he discovers things that need doing, so there is a big exploration aspect that is introduced there.

The third chunk is 3 new resource instances. It’s been awhile since we’ve had a new set of these. So for the tier 9 crafting resources, wood, ore and scholar jars of dead people bits and notes

The fourth type is a new type and style of questing that they are calling “Incrementals.†Incrementals will have anywhere between 4 and 6 objectives to them, and we can only do one objective per day.

You mentioned resource instances, what about other types of instances will we see any scaling of instances like the Rise of Isengard instances, or maybe a new big battle, what can we look forward to from a group content standpoint

jwbarry – Cue disappointing music; there is no group content in U13.

Rowan – There are active plans for a new epic battle, coming out with U14, so that’s one thing they are digging into pretty deeply right now, and he feels good about. He’s not committing to it but he feels good about it right now. He doesn’t know about how jwbarry feels about scaling other stuff, he knows they haven’t committed to anything just yet.

jwbarry – There are a couple of things that are candidates that they could do, the Isengard cluster is the closest one. However, there is significant work in scaling a space.

Questions about cosmetic pets

Will cosmetic pets be usable in raids and instanced spaces, or will that be disallowed

jwbarry – They can be used anywhere. They will likely not be allowed in the Ettenmoors. Entertainingly they are currently dealing with an issue where they don’t swim. The notion of a water volume is a server type thing, so the pet doesn’t know about it, so they try to make the pets float, and the engineer who was working on it was showing it to him and he’d get about halfway into a pond and follow him about halfway and then beeline for the shoreline. And the pet is only aware of the movement path the character is taking, so the engineer has no idea how the pet is moving autonomously and knows where the shoreline is.

Sapience – On creep-side, can they look forward to cosmetic pets in the future, say a baby warg for war-leaders?

jwbarry – That’s currently undecided. They want to get the system rolled out first for freeps where they understand the technology a bit better, because creeps are basically session players and they behave in a slightly different manner.

Questions about epic battles, instances/raids, and rewards

Regarding epic battles, is that replacing the classic raids going forward, or is there some point in the future where we can expect other classic type instances

jwbarry – Any single type of instance content does not replace or obviate the need or ability for any others. When they made skirmishes, they still made other instances after that. It all depends on where they are at in the story, what they are trying to present and represent, and what is the best suitable mechanism to do so. He would expect that when they get to Pellenor and Minas Tirith that those would be epic battle style instances and structure because that is what it was built to support and built to do. When they get down into Mordor, if there is a point in time where we get to Shelob’s lair and engage with her, he’d expect that to be an instance dealing with a boss in a cave with a standard structure. It depends on where they are. Epic battles are not the new definition of instance. They are another tool in the toolbox for them to tell story and create gameplay.

Regarding epic battle rewards, is new jewelry coming anytime soon, or will that come later

jwbarry – With U13 there are two changes to epic battle rewards, both relating to the platinum bar. As of right now when we fill the platinum bar, there are 10 different teal items we can get that belong to sets. There is also a chance that we may get one of 4 orange items. The orange items are upgraded versions of the 10 teal items. For update 13, the other 6 orange items will be swapped into the loot list for platinum. So the 6 orange items that we weren’t able to earn will now be the rare drops for filling the platinum bar. The 4 that we could earn beforehand will be disappearing from the list for awhile and may potentially come back in at a later point in time.

The other update for the platinum bar is that there is now a rare chance upon finishing a platinum bar, of receiving a level 95 First Age symbol.

Rowan – Knows they have other changes coming up such as inventory changes, a lot of systemic stuff and under the covers things that have been covered in past streams, but is open for more questions.

How can we get a First Age weapons with U13

HoarseDev – In big battles there is a small chance to get them from filling the platinum bar. And they threw a small chance to get them into some T3 skirms he believes.

jwbarry – Says probably the challenges. He believes they added them as a very low chance to wherever you could get second ages. He believes that was what the plan was.

HoarseDev – Doesn’t have the exact list in front of him but says there is definitely content to go out and do to try to earn First Ages.

Sapience – Clarifies that it’s not just T3 skirm raids, there are other ways to get First Ages.

jwbarry – One of the updates they did with U13 is a deed revamp, which is where a lot of players are getting a bunch of lootboxes on logging in. They looked at all the deeds, made sure all the regions had a suitable mix of slayer deeds and meta deeds that wrapped up the different categories, and then a meta that wrapped up each of the regions. There are about 70 new deeds in the game. They also looked at how well those deeds are rewarded. All of the region meta deeds reward a lootbox that is appropriate to the level range for that region. As part of an update and looking at feedback about how that goes, all of those lootboxes also now come with a key. He thinks there’s up to 17 that players can get for the new meta deeds for the regions and all of them will come with a key so players can open them immediately if we’d like to, or we can parcel them and sell them off, It’s our choice. But we’re not left with an inventory full of lootboxes as rewards that we can’t do anything with.

What about storage in U13, are new purchasable cosmetic and shared storage slots being added with U13

HoarseDev – Believes there are extra slots for wardrobe space being added – that’s on his calendar – but he’s not sure about the other storage space. He believes there will be extra bag slots available with the changes to how bags work, but he doesn’t know about shared storage, it might not be the right time for that.

Question about the revamped areas

Sapience – Has one more question that got in at the end. The updated regions that were part of the update, are they still planned, are any getting trimmed off, which regions are actually getting the once over for U13

jwbarry – They went through the Misty Mountains, the Trollshaws, and the North Downs. All three were on the initial list, all three did happen. A lot of the work has been looking at quest flow. North Downs covered 38 levels before, it was unwieldy and the flow wasn’t great, the vectoring wasn’t good, the distribution of quests needed work. They have a lot more tools with remote bestows, and a lot of stuff like that they can look at to really tighten up the regions and bring them up to as close to modern standards as they’ve been able to.

Discussion about future livestreams

Kingsfoil Championship League

https://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/announcing-kingsfoil-championship-league

April Fools !!!!

Player’s Council Applications Open

https://www.lotro.com/en/game/articles/apply-2014-lotro-players-council

Applications Close 4/14

Reskin your UI

http://www.lotrointerface.com/downloads/info581-JRRSkinscollection-Atributetomiddleearth.html

PAX Meet and Greet

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread.php?&postid=7131098#post7131098

April 11

TSO Classical Concert

Hi Cari and Layanor! I was wondering if you would give a hearty plug for the TSO Classical Concert on the 12th April.

It starts at 4.00pm (Server time).

We are holding our event at 7 Fairwood Lane, Imrath Ivrin, Falathlorn Homesteads, Ered Luin on Landroval.

We will be playing Mozart, Grieg, Dvorak and many more in our Twenty-Four Member Orchestra.

The Story of Narmeleth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA2tpBfrU2s&list=UUazee3oZZfcDtQDHJOGoZ5A

Mail from Kevin Bergman:

Hello, Lotro Reporter

I would like to start out with saying “thank you†for putting out an entertaining podcast! I always enjoy listening in while on a long drive.

The first point I want to hit in this letter is a little FYI. I wrote in a couple weeks ago asking about your experiences running the Deeping Wall raid, and about Big Battles in general. Up to a couple days ago, I always ran the HD instances with my lvl 95 Hunter, but after earning almost all the promotion points possible, I grudgingly began starting it all over again with my Mini. I’d always heard that minis can heal the officers with their skills, so in a duo Deeping Wall, I spent most of my time experimenting with healing skills, and discovered that you can heal the regular soldiers as well. I then discovered that you can heal just about everything! Banners, supplies on fire, winches, it can all be healed as if using the “repair†HD skill. My partner soon asked me to help kick ladders, which I’d ignored due to throwing sweet heals all over the place. Then I discovered that you can interact with ladders/hooks/banners in conjunction with healing skills! So, while hacking at a grappling hook (which took forever since I was only Rank 1 Engineer at this time), I was able to select individual soldiers and give them heals at the same time. This was particularly useful for banners. While using the “repair†skill, I had to only do about 3 heals on it to bring the banner from almost no morale, to full health in about 5 seconds. Using this strategy in The Hornburg earned us a full platinum run, despite it being the first time on both our toons and both of us being lvl 1 engineers.

My second point is a common complaint I hear about the Glittering Caves. I often hear that it is bugged, and that Gimli randomly dies in it. This used to happen to me during the Preparing the Charge side quest, until one run where I saw a warg in the caves, running around as if it lost a squeaky toy. I went to go check where it could have come from, and found that the area where Gimli is stationed (the eastern front) was getting swarmed with adds from the side quest, and Gimli was foolishly tanking them all. About 20+ enemies beating the snot out of him. He wasn’t randomly dying, he was just failing at his tanking responsibilities. So from then on, if I am running the 3-person Glittering Caves, one person will leave half way through the quest and go help Gimli out. He hasn’t died since.

My third point is just an idea I’ve had floating around my head. It seems that many people aren’t that impressed with the Epic Battles. I enjoy them, but I have noticed that the Vanguard skill line seems pretty broken or useless, while the Engineer is a solid choice to go with. What my idea would do is hopefully even out those HD classes a little, and make it so you truly rely on each other a bit more. What I would do is take the traps away from the Engineer, and give it to the Vanguard, and do away with many of the kill streaks. Instead, the vanguard’s meter would increase a small amount with each kill, and when the bar is full (say, after about 10 kills), the meter cashes out with a choice of either a small DPS increase, or a trap duration/damage/trigger count increase, and these buffs last the entire battle. And each time the meter cashes out, it would require a higher amount of kills to fill the meter again, making it increasingly difficult, but with stacking buffs. And with their ability to use traps, vanguards would be able to control the enemy slightly, giving them the chance to stop them before running into a crowd of Rohirrim soldier that will kill the enemy first. This would make it a great skill line for a DPS class. And especially for harder side quests, where a tough boss is in play, focusing on having a strong buff ahead of time for the fight would be important. But not to leave the Engineer a less awesome skill line, instead of their traps, they would have a “Build Barricade†skill, while there are less or none pre-set up in the instance. After running so many Epic Battles, I’ve learned that properly placed barricades can make or break a side quest. And along with a that, Engineers would also have a “Build Obstruction†which would cause the enemy waves to have to go around a somewhat small object, and if placed properly, they could file directly into the hands of a Vanguard Champion, who would have a handy trip wire there, and AOE them as they are stunned. The Officer line I would not change much, but with the other two changed, I think it would hopefully give some reliance on each other.  I really enjoy the Big Battle idea, and I like that Turbine is giving something different a shot, but it’s hard to sell an idea if it’s not working smoothly. If these battles were fully fleshed out, I think you’d see a renewed interest in them.

Well, I hope this letter isn’t too terribly boring. Thanks for your time, and keep up the great podcast!

Contact Information:

Email: lotro.reporter@gmail.com

Twitter: @lotroreporter

Facebook: LOTRO Reporter

Voicemail: 616-666-6778 or the widget on the right side of the screen when you visit the site.

YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/user/mmoreporternetwork

www.lotroreporter.com

www.twitch.tv/mmoreporter

Cari  Twitter: @thecarimac

Layanor  Twitter: @Layanor